Julian Assange’s whistleblowing service revealed the CIA is still able to hack consumer devices, which has already raised many questions for users and tech firms alike. Apparently, the agency targets all everyday consumer devices including smartphones, computers, and even smart TVs.

The guesses are that the new President of the US owns a 2012 Samsung Galaxy S3 that isn’t even updated anymore, which automatically leaved its owner vulnerable to cyber criminals and nation-state actors.

A recent crowdfunded effort to recount the vote in key states confirmed that there was no evidence of a successful cyberattack to change votes. However, the findings highlighted the extent to which the US political system is vulnerable to hacking attack.

Facebook founder has rejected the notion that fake news on the social media influenced the outcome of the US election and claimed that voters make decisions based on their lived experience, not something they’ve read somewhere online.

Back to the Future writer confirmed that the character of Biff Tannen, the trilogy’s villain, was based on Donald Trump. In the second film, which was celebrated last year as part of Back to the Future day, Biff becomes a successful businessman who owns a huge casino and uses his money to influence the politics. In the movie, Biff used the profits from his 27-story casino (prototype of the 37-story Trump Plaza Hotel, completed in 1984) to help shake up the Republican Party and finally assume political power himself. Biff encourages every citizen of his home town to call him “America’s greatest living folk hero.” Remind of someone?

A US cybersecurity firm Mandiant investigated allegations of secret communication with the Trump Organization and found no evidence of contact, email or financial links. The cybersecurity firm is owned by the California-based company FireEye. It was hired to examine Internet server logs presented to the Russian bank by media organizations investigating the link.

Copyright Alliance and CreativeFuture have sent an open letter and Change.org petition calling on both Clinton and Trump to take a tougher approach to copyright legislation. The groups say that protecting entertainment content is vital, and they don’t care which party is in power.

The recent report found out that the United Kingdom is the most popular place for online drug dealers in Europe. According to some estimations, the value of the monthly trade in drugs through darknet markets is £16m globally, with British dealers generating over 16% of it across the 8 largest marketplaces.

The US police seized Silk Road domain, the largest online drugs marketplace, 3 years ago, after which the numbers of drug deals on its successors had tripled, revenues had doubled, and product range increased 6 times.

The research collected data on drug deals from the 8 largest darknet markets that can only be accessed with an encrypted connection. It turned out that by far the most vendors operated from the United States, which hosted 890 drug dealers, while the United Kingdom hosted 338. Nevertheless, British dealers seem to be far busier, making twice more transactions monthly.

Germany and the Netherlands followed the UK in the numbers of dealers, with the former having a substantial concentration of cryptomarket vendor activity. The experts noted that cryptomarkets had grown substantially since Silk Road’s takedown.

It was also revealed that darknet drugs sales may have supply offline drug markets, because 1/4 of the drug sales worth more than $1,000. The study also found that most sales and revenues were generated within continents. Cannabis dominated the listings, making up more than 1/3 of listings across marketplaces. Stimulants take the second place with 29% of listings, followed by ecstasy-type drugs (19%). It must be noted that the European monitoring center for drugs and drug addiction has different statistics for offline drugs sales, with heroin accounting for 28% and ecstasy – 3% of total sales.

A recent published study (see here) on religion and digital piracy suggests that God appears to be one of the few who can really change people's attitude towards piracy. The study was published by researches from Australia a few days ago.

Cluster analysis and Multivariate analysis of variance were employed to determine whether there are significant differences between the less religious, moderately religious, and highly religious respondents in their attitude to digital piracy and behavioral intention. This study provides empirical evidence that highly religious respondents have a stronger attitude against digital piracy and are more willing to stop purchasing pirated media compared to the less religious and moderately religious respondents.